Substance abuse, also known as drug abuse, is a patterned use of a substance in which the user consumes the substance in amounts or uses methods with these substances which are harmful to themselves or others. A well known and documented form of substance abuse, especially in the use of opioid analgesics, is that involving the deliberate crushing, snorting or injecting of solid oral medication intended to be taken intact in order to get a feeling of euphoria.
Almost all of the abuse-deterrent formulations currently known are aimed at preventing patients from crushing, snorting, or injecting them. While these are very high-risk behaviours, they likely represent a small minority of patients who abuse prescribed opioids. Most patients who are abusing opioids are likely taking more than prescribed by mouth, or combining them with other medications and drugs.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) corroborates this observation. According to this regulatory agency, “opioid analgesics are often manipulated for purposes of abuse. Most abuse-deterrent technologies developed to date are designed to make product manipulation more difficult or to make abuse of the manipulated product less attractive or rewarding. However, these technologies have not yet proven successful at deterring the most common form of abuse—swallowing a number of intact pills or tablets to achieve a feeling of euphoria.” (see FDA Draft Guidance for Industry title Abuse-Deterrent Opioids—Evaluation and Labeling of January 2013).
Substance abuse can lead to addiction, serious adverse events, or in some cases, overdose and death. Overdose and death can also result from mistaken or intentional oral ingestion of a number of intact pharmaceutical unit dosage formulations, such as pills. Drug overdose is the leading cause of accidental death in the United States, causing more deaths than motor vehicle crashes in 2010 among people 25 to 64 years old. It is now generally accepted that the leading cause of death in drug overdoses in the U.S. today is prescription drugs. Drug overdose death rates have been rising steadily since 1992 with a 102% increase from 1999 to 2010 alone.
A major issue of great concern is that there continues to be reports of people deliberately or mistakenly swallowing a number of intact pills or tablets despite instructions not to do so, and suffering serious adverse effects as a result. Products containing active ingredients that will produce an emotional, psychological, euphoric, depressive, or generally psychedelic experience are particularly vulnerable to this form of abuse.
Attempts have been made in the past to control abuse or overdose from swallowing a number of intact solid dosage forms, but formulations and methods currently taught have not successfully prevented overdose from swallowing a number of intact tablets or capsules. Some of these approaches are sometimes executed after the fact, i.e., directed at a rescue therapy after overdose has occurred and do not necessarily address the issue of preventing overdose from occurring in the first place.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,375,083 and 8,106,016 relate to pharmaceutical compositions comprised of a chemical moiety attached to an active agent in a manner that substantially decreases the potential of the active agent to cause overdose or to be abused. When delivered at the proper dosage the pharmaceutical composition provides therapeutic activity similar to that of the parent active agent.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,474,757 relates to a method of preventing acetaminophen (APAP)-induced hepatotoxicity utilizing diallyl sulfide (DAS) and diallyl sulfone (DASO2). DAS and DASO2 are prepared as an oral dosage form or injected. In a preferred embodiment, diallyl sulfone is added to a dosage form of acetaminophen in an amount effective to prevent the metabolism of said unit dose of acetaminophen into its hepatotoxic metabolites. In certain preferred embodiments, the above formulations further include an effective amount of N-acetylcysteine to detoxify hepatotoxic metabolites of acetaminophen.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,604,650 relates to a medicine-dispensing system having a medication reminder to assist the patient in following a drug regimen. In an example embodiment, a medication reminder comprises a timer programmable to a predetermined interval. A user-alert is responsive to the timer, reminding the user to take a dose of medicine at the predetermined interval. A sensor detects whether a dose of medicine has been taken and a dose-indication informs the user of the time since a last medication. The dose indication further informs the user as to whether to take a next medication dose. Time of the last dose is determined by the timer receiving a signal from the sensor. A communications interface enables programming of a parameter associated with administering a medication.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,295,890 relates to a drug compliance monitoring system that provides a patient with a portable medication dispenser programmed with medication-taking data. The dispenser alerts the patient to take a dose of medication and gathers compliance data relating to the medication-taking data. The compliance data is accessible to a physician, or other care givers, etc., via a network database.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,643,560 relates to the use of, and methods to obtain, ion exchanger complexes with psychotropic drugs for reducing toxic side effects and lethality when overdosing the drug. The invention includes methods and compositions for modifying the total amount of drug released from the complex in the gastro-intestinal tract by adding a substance which affects the ion exchange process. The additional substance may be a salt which generates an ion with higher or similar affinity to the ion exchanger when compared to the drug. The additional substance may be a counter ion in an additional complex with an ion exchanger.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2013/0034503 relates to a method and composition for treating a patient that prevents or reduces drug abuse and overdose events with drugs. The method comprises: oral administration of a pharmaceutical composition comprising at least one drug bound to at least one ion exchange resin as a resinate, said ion exchange resins being selected from the group consisting of a cationic ion exchange resin and a anionic ion exchange resin, each said ion exchange resin being bound to at least one drug, wherein each said bound drug, measured as the unbound state, is less than about 75 percent of its saturation concentration in its resinate.
Australian Patent No. 769952 relates to an orally administrable pharmaceutical product comprising an information carrier having a form and composition such that information is recorded by the carrier; wherein the information carrier comprises a resistant material that is resistant to the gastric environment. The presence of the information carrier facilitates the treatment of overdose patients who have consumed large quantities of the pharmaceutical product. The information may relate to the characteristics of the product and may be recorded by engraving characters into the information carrier.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,254,088 relates to the preparation of naloxone and its activity as a narcotic antagonist. U.S. Pat. No. 3,493,657 relates to the combination of morphine and naloxone as a composition for parenteral use “which has a strong analgesic, as well as antagonistic effect, without the occurrence of undesired or dangerous side effects.”
The combination of pentazocine and naloxone has been utilized in tablets available in the United States, commercially available as Talwin® from Sanofi-Winthrop. Talwin® contains pentazocine hydrochloride equivalent to 50 mg base and naloxone hydrochloride equivalent to 0.5 mg base. Talwin® is indicated for the relief of moderate to severe pain. The amount of naloxone present in this combination has no action when taken orally, and will not interfere with the pharmacologic action of pentazocine. However, this amount of naloxone given by injection has profound antagonistic action to narcotic analgesics. Thus, the inclusion of naloxone is intended to curb a form of abuse of oral pentazocine, which occurs when the formulation is solubilized and injected. Therefore, this dosage has lower potential for parenteral abuse than previous oral pentazocine formulations.
Another example of attempts at preventing the potential harmful effects of overdose includes compositions that have been coated with emetics in a quantity that if administered in moderation as intended no emesis occurs, however, if excessive amounts are consumed emesis is induced therefore preventing overdose.
Scientists have reported the development and successful testing in laboratory mice of a substance that shows promise for becoming the first antidote for cocaine toxicity in humans. According to a report in ACS' Journal Molecular Pharmaceutics, the new so-called “passive vaccine” reversed the motor impairment, seizures and other dangerous symptoms of a cocaine overdose, which claims thousands of lives each year among users of the illicit drug. Kim D. Janda and Jennifer B. Treweek explain that their previous research established the validity of using vaccines as treatments for drug addiction and contributed to the promotion of one cocaine-active vaccine (and three nicotine-active vaccines) to clinical evaluation in humans. These so-called “active” vaccines elicit antibodies that bind circulating cocaine (and nicotine) molecules in the blood and prevent these drug molecules from reaching the brain. In doing so, vaccinated patients are “immune” to the drug's effects, and as a result, they feel no pleasurable effects from the drug if they backslide during recovery. The report describes the development of a cocaine passive vaccine, which consists of pre-formed human antibodies against cocaine that are 10 times more potent in binding cocaine molecules. This improved potency accelerates their ability to reverse cocaine toxicity, where time is of the essence. When administered by emergency medical teams or in hospital emergency departments, these passive vaccines could represent a life-saving therapeutic for overdose victims.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,277,384, 6,375,957, and 6,475,494 relate to oral dosage forms comprising a combination of an orally analgesically effective amount of an opioid agonist and an orally active opioid antagonist, the opioid antagonist being included in a ratio to the opioid agonist to provide a combination product which is analgesically effective when the combination is administered orally, but which is aversive in a physically dependent subject. Preferably, the amount of opioid antagonist included in the combination product provides at least a mildly negative, “aversive” experience in physically dependent addicts (e.g., precipitated abstinence syndrome).
There is still a need for formulations that prevent, inhibit, or delay drug abuse such as by chewing and/or licking intact tablet(s), snorting, inhalation, smoking, and/or insufflation of pulverized or milled tablet(s) either accidentally or intentionally.
There is still a need for formulations that prevent, inhibit, or delay overdose by ingesting too many unit dosage forms, either accidentally or intentionally.